


A Thousand Answers

by AlabasterInk



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Ben's Fall, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, I will fill up the Anakin & Leia tag myself if I have to, Leia goes to the one person who may understand her son, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:01:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28966524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlabasterInk/pseuds/AlabasterInk
Summary: She calls to him, just once, in the aftermath of her son's ruin, to ask him a question she never thought would matter.As is often the case with her father, the answer is lacking.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader
Comments: 13
Kudos: 99





	A Thousand Answers

**Author's Note:**

> Leia and Anakin's post-canon relation does not get nearly enough exploration, so I decided to help fill that gap myself. And considering what happens, I feel like Leia would really want to try and understand what happened to her son. Leia needs catharsis and Anakin is always going to do his best for those he loves, even if they don't love him back. Thus, this was born. 
> 
> This isn't strictly canon compliant with the sequels, but we can take liberties lol. 
> 
> Enjoy!!

She calls to him just once, reaching into the Force with the hesitance of a child and the determination of a grieving mother, and his response is immediate. Standing before her, a shimmering blue spectre of the past. He waits, giving her the courtesy of control. It’s kinder than the one he gave her in life. 

He’s not what she expected, achingly young and handsome instead of the blackened monster of her nightmares. She’s not sure whether it helps or not, to see what was. The man she came from instead of the beast she knew. She supposes it doesn’t matter. A fresh body does not a fresh start make, and she doesn’t intend to give him that start. Not yet. Maybe not ever. She’s not the forgiving type and she has the feeling neither is he. 

She hates the similarity, but it makes it easier. They know where they stand. 

“I have a question for you,” she says. Her gaze rests on the horizon, unable to look at this man who looks so much like her brother and her son, with her chin and her countenance. 

He tilts his head, the Force rippling around her with the sensation. “I figured you might.” 

Yes, he did, didn’t he? He knew what happened. What she’s lost. How could he not? The dead see all, and all that philosophical shit that never did her any good. “I have tried, for weeks now, to figure out what I did wrong. How I could have made a difference,” _so that I didn’t lose him._ “And I realized, that no matter what I did, nothing made any sense. I couldn’t change anything because I didn’t even know anything was wrong and I just—” she stops. Swallows her words. Pushes the deluge of emotions to the side and takes a breath. She’s rambling. Rambling to a monster, a man she despises; calling out to a beast for the comfort a father should give to his daughter and hating it. 

She takes another breath. A question, she has one question and that’s it. “I need to know. What was it for you? What happened to you? I couldn’t help him, and Obi-Wan couldn’t help you, and I’ll be damned if someone else ever has to face this ugly pit I’ve found myself clawing through. So tell me. What was it that happened in your life that was so bad you turned yourself into a monster?” 

He doesn’t speak for a moment. Mulling it over, perhaps. Or maybe trying to find all the problems he’d faced and gift it to her as an excuse. She wonders if she’ll buy it. If it will somehow fill the black hole that’s mawed through her chest and give her some semblance of comfort. 

How far she’s fallen. Looking for comfort from a monster. 

He shifts above her. He’s too tall and she’s too short, and sitting on the ground gives her no favors in this regard, but the Force paints a picture in her mind of his movements as he drifts along the physical world to sit beside her. He’s not close. He wants to be, but he knows she wouldn’t appreciate it. They’re too alike and she knows that down to her marrow. 

It’s a comfort that she doesn’t want, but takes anyway. A monster remembering his humanity. 

“Do you want the truth, or a history lesson?” He asks. His voice is soft and boyish, so different from the booming mechanical bark in her memories.

She snorts. “I never liked history. It’s biased and painted over far too often by victors looking to rationalize their crimes.” 

He nods. She can feel it like a warm breeze against her cheek. “True. We share that sentiment.” 

“And yet you did it anyway.”

He shrugs. “As did you. History is written by the victors and you are a victor.” 

“Your answer,” she states, because their victories were not the same and his history a figment of a blackened mind. 

He stares at her. It prickles the hair along her neck and pulls her in until her gaze has drifted from blue skies to blue eyes. They’re electric and sad and commanding from one General to another. “My answer? I could give you a thousand answers, Leia, and none of them would be enough. There are no explanations I can give that would give you the answer you want, and there are not enough reasons in the galaxy to excuse what I did.” 

“Then why? If there are no reasons, then why? Why did he—” _no_. 

“I said that there were no reasons to excuse it, not that there were not reasons at all.” He leans in and she despises how much comfort it brings her. How warm he feels in the Force, for all that it soothes her because if a monster like Darth Vader can be that warm then surely there’s hope. “But I made a choice, Leia. _I_ did. Not Obi-Wan. Not your mother. Not the Jedi or Palpatine. Me. Just as your son made his choice. Whatever part you played in his reasons are not an excuse for his actions, and wherever he goes from here are up to him.” 

She swallows. It’s acid in her throat and a pressure behind her eyes. She hates how he can pick her apart to find the truths she hides from herself. The blame she’s trying to place. She searches his face for something -- anything that she can grab hold of and use to pull herself up from the depths she’s fallen into. “Can he come back? Like you?” 

He smiles. It looks like Luke. It looks like her. It looks like her son. “Anyone can come back. It’s just a matter of wanting to.” 

“And if he doesn’t want to?” 

“Then that’s his choice.” He raises his hand to brush aside the tear on her cheek, before thinking better of it and bringing to his lap. She’s not sure why that hurts. “You can’t make his choices for him.” 

“Then what can I do?” 

“Fight. Hope. Keep him in your heart and remember who he was even when he forgets, then get up and move forward. You can’t go back, Leia, and you can’t force him to be someone he doesn’t want to be.” 

Her throat is scraped raw as she says, “It hurts.” 

“It does. But if there’s anything I know about you, it’s that you don’t give up when there’s still work to do.”

“Learn that from the Force, did you?” 

He smirks. It’s lopsided and reminds her of a puppy. “Actually, I learned that from a young girl who lied to my face after being caught blatantly performing treason.”

“Yes, well, treason seems to be my middle name.” 

“Hm, Leia Treason Organa. Catchy.” 

“Fits better than Leia Amidala Skywalker.” 

“I don’t know. I’m quite partial to that one.”

“You don’t get to be partial to it. She doesn’t exist.” 

“No, I guess she doesn’t,” and it aches, somewhere inside her and inside the Force that that’s true. But the Force isn’t kind, and neither is the past, and Leia Organa has never had the luxury.

“Your mother would be proud, at least. Both of them.” 

Her mother, the Queen of Alderaan, who wiped away tears and taught her strength, and her mother, the Queen of Naboo, who loved her despite never knowing her. 

“And my father?” 

He smirks. It’s sad, twisted with the knowledge of where they stand. “Immeasurably.” 

“I don’t mean you.” 

“I know.” 

But he is. And she did. A little. She’ll give him this, and allow herself the fantasy. 

Leia Organa does not spend long in fantasies. She shutters her gaze and pulls back. “Will you help him, then, while I’m off committing treason? Talk to him, or whatever it is dead people do in the Force.”

“I can’t talk to him, Leia. He won’t listen.”

“He might.” She’s not a fool. She knows how her son took Darth Vader into his mind and twisted him into an ideal to strive for. He may not listen to her, with all that hatred and resentment she still doesn’t understand, but he may for a man he thinks he wants to be. “He idolizes you. He wants to be you. And I hate you, but I _love_ him, and if a man like you can come back, then maybe he can too.”

“He has to want it first.” 

“So _tell_ him that. Make him want it.” 

“Not quite how it works.” 

“Luke made you.”

“Luke was a catalyst,” the ghost stresses. “But _wanting_ , Leia. No one can make you want it, except yourself. Because wanting it means accepting you were wrong. It means accepting that all your rationalizations were just that. I means taking responsibility for what you’ve done, and that is significantly harder than just deciding to be good. It’s seeing what you were capable of, taking in all that horror and monstrosity, and accepting it. No one can make him do that, Leia. Not even me.”

“He idolizes you.”   
  
“He idolizes my mistakes. He idolizes my shame and horror and regrets. He doesn’t want Anakin Skywalker. He wants Darth Vader, and one does not exist without the other.”

And her son will not accept that. The knowledge stomps the pieces of her heart into powdered glass and she turns away. “So you can do nothing. You are just as powerless as I.” 

For once. For the first time. The one time she wants him omnipotent and he’s all too human.

He nods, despondent, with her heartbreak in his eyes. “I can watch him for you. I can be a hand on his shoulder. But I can no more bring back your son than Obi-Wan could bring back me.”

“He has to do that himself.” 

“Yes.” 

She nods once, pulling together the shavings of her heart and gluing them together. It’s depressing how good she’s gotten at doing so. “I understand. Watch him, then. If no one else can, then...watch him.” Care for him, she wants to say. Love him. No one else will at this point and he will not let her in to do so. 

He softens. The Force of him wraps her in a warm blanket and she thinks he understands what she can’t say. “I will.” _  
_

_I’ll care for him,_ she hears. _I’ll love him, until he lets you back in to do it yourself._

A promise of love from a monster shouldn’t bring her such peace, but if her family is to be made up of monsters and men and gods, then perhaps it’s time she learned to embrace it. She’s spent her whole life running from him and his legacy, and it’s only brought her pain. 

Leia bows her head. Not forgiveness, not benediction, not even acceptance, but a chance. Recognition for the man he was and the man he’s trying to be again. “Thank you, Master Skywalker.” 

Anakin smiles, like a puppy that has since grown old, and returns the gesture. “Always, Master Organa.”

And he’s gone, as if he was never there in the first place. A hole in her life. But the Force is warm around her, waiting for her to reach out again. She’s not sure she will. She’s not sure she wants to. But the choice is nice. 

An olive branch should she ever decide to take it. 

Around her, the world pulls back into focus. Naboo roses, fragrant and sweet, waft in from the garden and the crystal waters glimmer under the sunlight. It’ll be dark soon. Already, the air is beginning to chill. 

She gets up, picking up her skirts and ambling back inside. There’s work to do and an uncertain future ahead. 

Her son made his choices. It’s time she made hers.

**Author's Note:**

> It's a start for them lol. And yes, for any of those wondering, Leia is at the Lake House on Naboo. Specifically, on a balcony by the rose garden Padme wanted their room to be. 
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed! Please let me know what you thought in the reviews and thank you for reading!!!


End file.
